Lost Ring Lament

Lost Ring Lament (revised)


“Now I’ll always know where it is.”
-Ruth Gordon in Harold and Maude

It could be clutching my sister’s spiked heel
or fomenting in my housemate’s first homebrew.
It likely looks new to someone else now,
not like it was on my mother’s ring finger for
forty years and three days, then on mine for nine.

Could be that construction workers cemented it.
Likely, something’s accidentally gulped it
and will shit it out, so it will grow into an apple
or pear tree in our orchard. There, it will circle
roots until they are richer than Midas from inside out.

For nine years after fear pulled it from her blue hand
and placed it onto mine, the shine warded off
clients, lovers; made of me a gold orphan, an outcast from love.

It may have risen on the rain, a diamond star now above.
Or perhaps a robin pushed it into the earth. There, it could
be sinking like tears, worms jumping through it like fire.
My mother, the gardener, would like it lost there best of all.
Choking back weeds. Forming fingers of dirt to fill it.

Lost rings cause curses on sailors, their hands dried from
an absence of lov , an overwhelm of rope.
No wonder pirates bury their treasures at sea,
mapping carefully as if these hordes are home,
as if they are sunken mistresses made of 12 karat bone.